Category Archives: Global Investor

George Soros is a global investor. He currently ranks among the top 30 richest men with a net worth estimated at $25 billion. Having risen from a humble background and enduring hardships at a young age, George has a soft spot for the less privileged in society and values making substantial contributions towards supporting them. Estimates indicate that he has spent over $12 billion to support causes fighting for justice and equality.

Soros was born in 1930 in Hungary. He survived the Jewish massacre by the Nazis who killed approximately 5,000 Hungarian Jews. His family managed to escape through use of fake papers and false identity and later relocated to England in 1947. In England, Soros attended London School of Economics earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in philosophy. As a student, he did odd jobs including working as a waiter in a nightclub and a porter at the railway to raise enough for his personal support.

George Soros started his career working for various merchant banks in the United States after immigrating in 1956. He quit employment in 1969 to start his worn hedge fund named Double Eagle. He moved on to start Soros Fund Management with the first profits made from Double Eagle that he later renamed to Quantum Fund. It is on this platform that Soros rose to be one of the biggest investors in the history of US. Read more at The New York Times about George.

With his newly found fortune, Soros created the Open Society Foundations based on the philosophy of Karl Popper that Soros first came across during his time in college. The theory argues that no philosophy or ideology is the arbiter of truth. It further states that democratic governance is the only key to the success of societies across the globe.

His philanthropic work started in 1979 by offering scholarships to the South African black community suffering under apartheid. He proceeded to offer the Communist Eastern Bloch a platform to exchange ideas by providing them with a photocopier to be used in the reprinting of materials. George Soros pioneered the Central European University after the fall of Berlin wall with intent to provide an ideal place to foster critical thinking. His funding went further to aid in cultural exchanges between the West and Eastern Europe, consequentially opening the Soviet society to the world. Read more about George’s life story at biography.com.

Alongside fighting for democracy, transparency, and accountability in governments, George Soros became actively involved in fighting for recognition of same-sex marriages in the early 2000s. He also started the medical marijuana movement in the US, which fights for recognition of the drug as a treatment for cancer and other health conditions. He continues to transverse the world identifying and fighting for worthy causes to improve the lives of the less privileged in society.